The Duke's Disaster (R) (21 page)

Noah regarded Thea steadily as the tears slipped down her cheeks, then he took the towel from her, slowly winding it into his hands. When Thea sat naked, mortified, and hanging on to her anger for the sake of pride more than anything else, Noah draped the towel around her shoulders and assumed the place beside her.

Thea resisted the urge to fall upon him weeping, and that took effort, because Noah settled one long arm around her shoulders and tucked her closer. A day that had been oppressively hot now seemed chilly, and Noah’s warmth had become necessary to Thea’s continued ability to breathe.

“I apologize for having annoyed you,” he said. “Now, tell me about these sauces that are vexing my duchess. I’ve a preference for anything made with butter, and have long believed garlic and leeks lack subtlety.”

* * *

“I have died, and all my tutors’ predictions have come to pass,” Grantley informed his pillow. “I am in hell.”

“You look like hell,” Noah observed as he opened the heavy drapes. “You smell like hell, and you probably feel like hell.”

“My own personal demon genius.” Grantley rolled into a ball. “Capable of speaking only profound truth.”

“Up you go.” Noah whacked him smartly on the backside with a riding crop. He’d come prepared, for Grantley responded to the crop—typical English schoolboy. “You’ve reparations to make.”

“Haven’t you a wife to keep you out of mischief?” Grantley rubbed his fundament and managed to sit up, hair sticking out in all directions, eyes bloodshot and ringed with shadows.

“My dear duchess needs her rest,” Noah said, which was the truth, particularly lately. Thea might also need a respite from the company of her ham-handed duke. “You need to get back on the horse, so to speak.”

“Was on him last night.” Grantley studied his own bare feet. “He’s probably in the mews, still under saddle. Unless somebody stole him. I shouldn’t like that.”

“He’s enjoying his morning oats, or his noon oats,” Noah said, tossing Grantley a dressing gown. “Your help is more honorable than you are.”

“My help?”

“It now being July, and thus the third quarter, your help has resumed their posts in hopes of earning the occasional wage. Now, what have you to say for yourself, Grantley?”

Thea would be heartbroken to see her brother in such a condition, though she wouldn’t like him sporting black eyes and a split lip any better.

Ah, the frustrations of married life.

“Myself?” Grantley scrubbed a hand over a thin, sallow face sporting an uneven crop of bristles. “Myself could use a little hair of the dog, or a lot of hair of the dog, but as myself’s brother-in-law is once again impersonating God’s Governess, I suppose I’d best wash and shave.”

“You stood up your sister,” Noah said quietly, the better to torment the damned, “and Thea can take that up with you, but you stood up
my
sister as well.”

“Confusing,” Grantley said, rising carefully, then hanging on to the bedpost. “All these sisters. It’s like this, Anselm, I either kept drinking, or I would have called the blighter out.”

“Sit.”

Grantley dropped like a brick back to the mattress, then looked green.

“Eyes open,” Noah ordered, passing over the empty washbasin. Thanks to a merciful Deity, Grantley did not cast up his accounts.

“Now what is this talk about calling somebody out?” Noah used his older-brother-knows-all voice, with satisfying results.

“Eggerdon,” Grantley said, setting the basin aside. “He kept insinuating my sister was not fit for a title, and if she must marry, then who better than a Winters, because whores will congregate on any corner, and so forth.”

Old rage washed through Noah, and old regret, along with a bracing dose of new rage, for Thea had no part in the unfortunate Winters legacy.

“
So
forth?
” Noah growled.

“So forth.” Grantley started to nod, then apparently thought better of it. “Eggerdon’s a crony of Hallowell’s, and Hallowell was there too, I think.”

“You didn’t call anybody out?” Somebody needed calling out, badly.

“Drunk.” Grantley waved a hand. “Even I know you don’t call a man out when you’re both in your cups. Not sporting, things said in the dregs, and so forth.”

“No more so-forthing,” Noah said as calmly as he could. His guts were churning, and not with anything as easily cured as an excess of gin. Thea’s good name had been called into question, likely by Hallowell, who would have cheerfully taken advantage of her himself.

If Hallowell was behind this disrespect toward Thea, his accusations made little sense. Noah had watched Thea for most of the Season, and at every turn, her behavior had been exemplary. Propriety could be faked, but not decency.

Not goodness, and yet, on their wedding night, Noah had been disappointed in Thea. Shame tried to intrude on Noah’s temper, but he hadn’t time for it.

“You’re removing to Wellspring come the week after next,” Noah said.

“The country?” Grantley grimaced. “Don’t think you have the authority to banish me, Anselm, though I likely deserve it.”

“I’m not banishing you, I’m inviting you,” Noah said, going to the corridor and bellowing for the bath just as two footmen wheeled it around the corner.

“Inviting me to what?” Grantley rose and ran a hand through his hair, which did nothing to tame it.

“A gathering to welcome your sister to the ducal family. Thea wasn’t about to put up with a ball here in Town.” Smart woman, the duchess. A ball in July would be stifling at best.

“Thea’s stubborn.”

“As am I,” Noah said, appropriating the tea service from the maid who’d followed the footmen into the room. “We’re having a family gathering, with a few acquaintances thrown in to even up the numbers. Your bath awaits.”

With the ponderous dignity of the inebriated and hurting, Grantley passed Noah the robe and lowered himself into the steaming water.

“Reprieve from my sentence,” Grantley murmured. “How are the girls?”

A glimmer of gentlemanly instinct, at last. “You’ll see Lady Antoinette later this afternoon when you take her driving in the park. You will travel out to Wellspring with her, James, and Patience. You weren’t gambling these past few evenings, were you?”

“Don’t believe I was.” Grantley began to scrub. “Mostly drinking.”

“And not calling out this Eggerdon person.”

“He’s a smarmy little blighter who usually has his nose—or some other part—up somebody’s arse, knows all the gossip, but never has any coin. Smells of pomade and resentment.”

“Younger son?”

“Of course.” Grantley sank down to rinse, then rose back up. “I ran into your uncle too, I think.”

“You’re not sure?”

Grantley squinted at the soap. “I think he’s the one who put me on my horse when Eggerdon started casting aspersions. I’m almost sure of it.”

“Then you’re in his debt,” Noah said. “Time to shave. You’ve lollygagged long enough.”

“The hell you say, Anselm. The water’s still hot.” Grantley’s indignation was laughable, when he was wet, pale, the worse for drink, and sitting on his bare arse in a tub of bubbles. “My beard hasn’t softened, and my valet isn’t on hand.”

“Your beard has barely sprouted,” Noah said, pulling over a stool and rolling out Grantley’s shaving kit. “See to yourself, Grantley, and I might allow you a cup of tea.”

“Serve you right if I cut my throat,” Grantley muttered, but Noah held the mirror, and Grantley’s hands shook only a little, so the job was passably done. When Grantley was dressed, dosed with strong tea, and more effectively impersonating a sentient human being, Noah dragged him to the library.

“You’ve staff on hand now and for the next few weeks,” Noah said. “Summon Mrs. Wren.”

Grantley looked nonplussed but intrigued as Noah laid out with Mrs. Wren a course of tasks for the maids and footmen, including a deal of cleaning, dusting, airing, and polishing.

“Now we get out the ledgers,” Noah informed the earl.

“Ledgers?” Grantley ran a finger around his collar. “Hirschman sees to the ledgers.”

“Hirschman is your man of all work,” Noah chided. “He isn’t your house steward. You don’t pay him a house steward’s wages, and a house steward doesn’t get up in the dark of night to see to the horse you neglected. You look over Hirschman’s work for two reasons: First, you might find an error, because every man can make a mistake. Second, you want him to know what he does for you matters, and your supervision is a way to do that.”

“You don’t mention he could be cheating.” Grantley offered this, slouched in his chair across the desk from Noah, gaze roaming the room.

“He’s a fool not to be,” Noah countered. “You are a pigeon waiting to be plucked, Grantley, and then you’ll have to marry for money, if anyone will have you. If you think Hirschman would cheat you, you should let him go.”

“Without proof?”

“Would he cheat you?”

“Of course not.” Grantley looked increasingly uncomfortable. “Mrs. Wren would bash him with her rolling pin.”

“Grantley…” Noah flipped the ledger around and settled into the other chair. “I came into my title when I was still a minor. I mucked up the works, royally and often. Nobody expects you to be perfect, but neither will you be forgiven if you give up without a fight.”

“Give up what?”

God help the boy, for Noah wasn’t sure he could.

“Your honor.” Noah pulled his chair closer to Grantley’s, and pointed at the most recent ledger entry. “Who is this Harold person, and why did you spend your coin on him?”

An hour and a half later, Noah admitted to a grudging respect for Grantley’s grasp of numbers. The earl’s appreciation for household practicalities was sadly lacking, though his aptitude for accounting was excellent.

“You see the way of it now?” Noah asked. “At any point, you should be able to open this journal and know how much cash you have about.”

“Like a bank does,” Grantley said. “Not complicated, but who showed it to you?”

“The bookkeeping part of it, my tutor explained. He was a younger son, and they tend to take money seriously,” Noah said, rising. “The legalities, my land stewards and solicitors imparted, and some of the rest of it, James’s stepfather shared with us when we came down from university.”

“The rest of it? There’s more?”

“The don’t-call-a-fellow-out-when-he’s-drunk parts,” Noah said. “Which mostly amounts to decency and common sense.”

“Thea has common sense,” Grantley observed, peering up at Noah owlishly. “She married you.”

“And I married her,” Noah said, withdrawing a vellum envelope. “That’s your invitation, Grantley. See that you join us, and try to cut back on the drinking.”

The gin would kill him, or lead him into deadly stupid situations. Thea would mourn, and she didn’t deserve that.

Grantley got to his feet and walked with Noah toward the door, pausing before they left the privacy of the library.

“Why’d you come by, really, Anselm?”

Because Thea had asked this of Noah, once, weeks ago, when in all the weeks of their marriage she’d asked nothing for herself.

“You are family,” Noah said. “That means I have an obligation to you, Grantley, but it also obligates you to others. Besides, you’re free entertainment, and there’s little enough of that in life.”

Grantley opened his mouth, then shut it abruptly and smiled a smile that reminded Noah of something he hadn’t seen in a while: Thea in a good mood.

Twenty

Thea’s husband had run off again, or she’d run him off. This time, he’d disappeared like a thief in the night—or the morning—stealing away before Thea had even risen. She had a vague memory of him kissing her cheek in the first gray light of day, but couldn’t be sure it was from that morning or any of several other mornings.

Noah was put off by her moods; that much was obvious. They hadn’t made love since he’d gone swimming with her days ago. Thea told herself she should be grateful he’d not pestered her.

Except it wasn’t pestering from Noah, and she wasn’t grateful.

He’d left her a note this time, claiming he’d be back before nightfall, but full dark had fallen, and despite preferring to feel neglected, what Thea felt was worried. Men with as much wealth and influence as the Duke of Anselm had enemies. They stepped on toes, inadvertently or otherwise, and ill will found them.

Thea set down her brush, and opened the music box she kept on her vanity. The little minuet had soothed her through the loss of her mother, her home, her virginity, and her innocence. It could soothe her into marriage as well.

“You should be in bed, madam.”

Relief washed through Thea. “You’ve taken to lurking in doorways, Your Grace.” She finished winding the key and set the music box down.

“What must I do to break you of the habit of Your Gracing your own wedded husband in the very privacy of our chambers?” Noah grumbled.

He ambled into the room, freshly shaven, his hair still damp, and Thea realized she’d been so lost in her brown study she hadn’t heard him in his rooms. He was in a dressing gown and bare feet, and fatigue lurked around his eyes and his mouth.

“This is a pretty little tune,” he said. “An old-fashioned waltz.”

“More likely a minuet. The music box was my grandmother’s and then my mother’s.”

The melody left Thea unaccountably weepy, for which she blamed her husband. She’d been worried about him, and he’d been not three doors away.

“You want to give this to our daughter?” he asked.

Yes. No. Thea still needed the music herself. “We have two daughters. I could not choose between them.”

Noah came up behind Thea, put both hands on her shoulders, then wrapped his arms around her. “This upcoming gathering has you discommoded. Shall we cancel it?”

Thea rested her cheek on Noah’s muscular forearm and let herself feel his warmth and strength. How had he known, and what should she say?

The truth, of course. She was getting better at trusting him with the truth. “I’ll feel like a coward if we cancel it.”

“Which would leave you worse than discommoded. I’ve checked with the staff. Your troops are in place, their orders in hand. The house is spotless, the invitations delivered, and all is in readiness. What is it that yet bothers you, Thea?”

The music wound down, and Noah twisted the key again while Thea fashioned an honest answer to his question.

“
I
am not in readiness.”

“What can I do to help?”

Oh, damn him. Noah claimed to know nothing of wooing, and that was a lie. “You shouldn’t have to help. Dukes don’t help with house parties.”

His embrace was gentle and absolutely safe. “Husbands do.”

Good husbands. He was determined to make Thea cry. “You know this how, Anselm?”

“Sweetheart, shall we debate something of parliamentary importance so I can put a little fire into my defense, or shall we bat domestic shuttlecocks between us for the next week?”

Thea heard the weariness in Noah’s voice, not only of the body, but also of the state she was in. She was weary of it too. Sick to her soul of it.

“I am…anxious.”

“Scared, you mean,” Noah said easily. “I was scared I’d have to shoot my horse.”

Thea had been frightened he would too. “This is different.”

Noah studied her in the mirror for a long time, wound up the music again, and drew her to her feet.

“May I have the honor?” In his dressing gown, he swept her a courtly bow, holding her hand high, as if they were at a grand ball.

“Noah, this is…” Silly. Ridiculous. Also precious.

He assumed the waltz position and slowly twirled Thea around the room. She was stiff at first, his folly was ill timed, and her mind was still stuck on nothing more than a few guests for a few days. Then Noah held her closer, the music slowed more, and thinking became less compelling.

“I haven’t known quite how to go on with you lately,” Noah said when they were merely swaying to the last few notes. “I had the great, profound, and brilliant insight on the way home from Town that perhaps I ought simply to ask.”

Thea had come to associate lavender and roses with Noah, with a sense of homecoming, and he’d called Wellspring home.

“I wouldn’t know how to answer.”

Except Thea would, if she had the courage, know how to tell Noah she’d missed him in bed at night. Not only the marital relations—that was a whole different kind of complication. She’d missed
him
.

“Then let me make this simple for you, Thea: I’d like to sleep with my wife tonight. What would you like?”

What was Noah asking? What was he saying?

He shifted, as if to step back, and involuntarily, Thea’s arms tightened around him.

His chin came down on her crown, and his hand splayed across the middle of her back.

“Can you find the words for me, Wife? My manly insecurities are at spring tide of late.”

“Would you please stay with me tonight, Husband? I have…”

“Yes?”

“You want more?”

“I am a lot of duke to be wrestling insecurities on such a late and lonely night.”

“I’ve missed you.”

Noah didn’t make her repeat it, for which Thea silently thanked him. Instead, he kissed her sweetly, at length, though he remained only moderately aroused. She kissed him back, trying to tell him she really had missed him, really, truly, even if she couldn’t be gracious with the words.

When they went to bed, Noah loved Thea slowly, almost reverently, and then held her in the darkness, while Thea found the first decent rest she’d had in a week.

* * *

“I am surrounded by shameless laggards,” Noah announced as he stirred sugar into Thea’s tea, took a sip, and passed her the remaining half cup. “And you.” He glared at the cat. “Don’t be eyeing the cream pitcher, shameless wench. Your figure is showing alarming signs of your weak morals, and you do not deserve cream.”

“For God’s sake, hush.” This from Thea, who was clutching her teacup with bleary-eyed desperation.

“A sign of life, God be praised for His endless miracles.”

“Now you think to offer prayers, Anselm. Pray silently until I’ve finished my tea.”

Noah gave the cat a scratch under the chin and busied himself pouring a dish of cream and placing it on the hearth. Bathsheba washed her paws, her ears, and her whiskers before deigning to break her fast. By then, Noah had the second cup of tea ready, and cinnamon toast liberally buttered as well.

“You really ought to rest more, Wife.” Noah had assayed a few exploratory caresses and provoked not even a sigh from his duchess.

“You
woke
me
up
to tell me I should rest more?”

Her Grace was speaking in complete sentences before the second cup of tea. Noah took encouragement from that.

“How else was the message to be conveyed,” he asked, “when you sleep like the dead? We have business to conduct today.”

“You have business.” Thea accepted the second cup of tea, which was also not quite full. “I have a nattering magpie for a husband.”

“Who has brought you a present from Town.”

“Another horse?”

“Must you sound so hopeful?” Noah tore off a corner of toast, then passed Thea the rest. “My womenfolk are equipped with mounts. This is a present, just for you.”

Thea was grouchy and slow about it, but Noah could tell he’d piqued her interest when she made short work of the toast and her third half cup of tea.

“I might sew you a loincloth if I like this present,” she allowed as Noah did up the hooks at the back of her dress ten minutes later. “Or if I don’t.”

“Have some faith, Wife.” Noah escorted his duchess through the house at a decorous pace, though their objective made him a trifle nervous.

For her part, Thea was getting better about coming along peaceably, or perhaps she was keeping her powder dry.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

Noah led her down the stairs and out the back hallway, pausing only long enough to fling her old cloak over her shoulders, for the morning was blessedly cool. Out on the back terrace, a box sat on a chair, the box wrapped in decorative blue paper.

“Have you done something I won’t like, Noah?”

“Many things,” he said. “You make your displeasure evident when I transgress. This is a gift, Thea. A present, a token, from your husband to you.”

“You are doting?”

Noah gave her credit for courage, and himself too. “I am doting shamelessly, and you will endure this hardship like the duchess I know you to be. Now open your gift, and I’ll show you how to use it.”

Thea eyed him dubiously, eyed the package just as carefully, and picked it up.

“Before noon, if you please,” Noah said. “The day will grow too hot to gallop.”

Thea shook the box, and sniffed it, and as Noah watched her, he gained a new appreciation for how reticent his wife had become regarding the joys of life.

“How long has it been since you had a present, Wife?”

“My husband gave me a lovely mare only a few weeks ago,” she said, untying the ribbon around the package.

“Before that?”

“My music box, I suppose. We weren’t much for presents, growing up, except at Yule, and those were either silly or practical.”

Thea unwrapped a wooden box, and shot Noah a puzzled glance.

“Sweetheart, the box is not the present. The box holds the present, and I can assure you what’s in there is neither noisome nor wiggly. If you don’t like it, you can simply thank me for the thought and hit me over the head with the box.”

For Thea’s sake, Noah had kept his tone light, but his heart had begun to beat harder against his ribs, almost as if he were afraid, or very nervous.

“A knife?” Thea held up the elegant little dagger, and Noah was pleased to see it fit her hand beautifully. “A knife, and what’s this? I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this before.”

Thea was…smiling, at Noah’s gift, then at him. Not a smile he could parse. Perhaps she thought him daft.

“The blade is Italian,” Noah said, because Thea apparently hadn’t any more words for the occasion. “They take their weapons seriously, and their women too. You buckle the leather sheath about your leg under your skirts, if you don’t want to tuck it into your bodice. Shall I show you?”

Thea nodded, saying nothing, and Noah wasn’t sure if she was humoring him, horrified beyond words, or maybe—God help her—pleased. She took the chair and daintily held her skirts up past the ankle. Noah reached the rest of the way and affixed her weapon snugly below her right knee.

“Nobody will know it’s there, but you might want to get used to wearing it,” Noah said, sitting back on his haunches. “I’ve tied it on the right leg, but you might prefer it on the left. It all depends on how easily you can unsheathe it.”

Thea stared at him, an utterly unreadable stare that ought to be forbidden to any female bearing the status of wife.

“What made you do this, Husband?”

Noah studied Thea’s hem, because he couldn’t meet that stare. Whatever else was true about Thea’s expression, her gaze held a desperation he’d never seen before, and a vulnerability he’d sensed even before they’d married.

Noah had
done
this
because he could not abide that his duchess be either vulnerable or desperate.

“That regret you mentioned befell you at a house party, didn’t it, Thea?”

She nodded once and turned her face away, and Noah was still at sea, wondering if he’d offended her, if he’d offended some rule of husbandly behavior no one had thought to tell him. He was already devising James’s punishment for that sorry oversight when Thea’s arms vised around his neck, and she pitched into him.

“Thank you. Thank you, Noah, thank you, thank you.”

By sundown, Thea could throw the damned thing with deadly accuracy. At bedtime, she asked if Noah would mind if she slept with it under her pillow every night.

He assured her he would not.

* * *

Noah looked his brother up and down, trying to pinpoint what exactly was wrong. “You’re home a bit early.”

“By one day,” Harlan replied, leading his gelding into the stable yard.

“You can let the lads see to him,” Noah said. “I’ll not tattle to the great and wonderful Greymoor.”

“Greymoor
is
wonderful,” Harlan said, “or his riding is, and his countess knows how to keep her guests in victuals. She also introduced me to Heathgate, and to Moreland’s heir.”

“She’s a conscientious hostess, or perhaps she enjoyed showing off her handsome young guest,” Noah said, taking the reins from Harlan’s hand and passing them to the waiting groom. “In truth, I am glad to see you, and not only out of fraternal sentiment.”

Had Harlan filled out in the mere days he’d been gone? Grown taller too?

“What did you mean, Lady Greymoor was showing me off?”

The gelding was led away, swishing its tail against Harlan’s side, an equine comment on the owner’s mood, perhaps.

“I meant nothing,” Noah said, walking off in the direction of the house. The heat had driven his entire family daft. “You up for a quick swim?”

“No, thank you.” Harlan’s tone would have frozen the entire lake, complete with swans. “A bath will do. A tray in my room will suffice thereafter.”

Harlan was a ducal heir, and for the first time, he sounded the part.

“You’ll have to tell Thea your preferences,” Noah said as they crossed into the garden. “Mind you tread lightly with my duchess. She’s planning a house party, but you must not call it that.”

“Where will I find her?”